The very first step in writing a good short story is having a decent plot to work with. "How do you get a decent plot?" you ask. Well, here's how we do it.

Think of what you want to write. Do you want to write about alien sending messages to earth in hope to join both species? Or do you want to write about two best friends who haven't talked to each other for years? Think about a genre, narrow it down, and then wait for inspiration. We think that forcing the idea of the plot makes it tasteless and less passionate. Wait, for your patience will give you the plot of your dreams!

Next, try to have a rough idea of how long your book will be. Make sure it's not too long for a short story. There are times where a short story has a lot of chapters but each chapter is short. If they are letter format, voicemails, dialogue only etc, they'd still be considered a short story unless your word count goes past 10k, which is the standard word count for short stories.

Finally, start planning out your characters. We'll discuss character planning in the next Short Story chapter!